Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: The Storied Life of Raven Reyes
by Astratta
Summary: DISCONTINUED! 19-year-old Raven Reyes receives a mysterious key belonging to her late mother, gets sucked into a time-traveling adventure, and develops a romance with Lexa Woods along the way. AU. Raven/Lexa. Slow burn. Minor Jasper/Monty, Octavia/Lincoln, and Clarke/Bellamy along the way.
1. Chapter 1

Sorry for the long setup! You can skip to the content if you want! It's down below, listed under the heading "CHAPTER 1."

 **PROMPT** (from post/95938153285/challenge-prompt):

"Randomly select two or three books you haven't read yet. Using only what you know about them from the back cover summaries and your own assumptions, try to find some way to combine what you think you know about the plots into one new, original idea. For a greater challenge, try to select books from entirely different genres.

"If you do end up using the ideas you come up with, be sure to give credit where it is due!"

 **BOOKS SELECTED** :

1) _The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry_ by Gabrielle Zevin

Summary: "A. J. Fikry's life is not at all what he expected it to be. He lives alone, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. But when a mysterious package appears at the bookstore, its unexpected arrival gives Fikry the chance to make his life over-and see everything anew."

2) _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel_ by Jonathan Safran Foer

Summary: "Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin."

 **MY STORY IDEA:**

After the death of her mother, whose lifelong dream of owning a bookstore had gone unfortunately awry when a chain store moved in down the block and sales went into a seemingly endless freefall, nineteen-year-old Raven Reyes receives a mysterious package at the bookstore and is sucked into an urgent, secret search through time. With a chance to make her life over, ardent tinkerer Raven roams through time on a mission to find the lock that fits the mysterious key she receives, encountering a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. Ultimately, Raven ends her journey where it began, at her mother's grave. But now she is accompanied by Lexa Woods, who has been renting the spare room of her grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up her mother's empty coffin.

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

AU. Raven/Lexa pairing. Slow burn. A healthy smattering of coarse language. And possibly a sex scene or two.

Please note that I have not read either of these books, I have never set foot in New York, I have not watched _The 100_ in full, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

So…here we go.

 **CHAPTER 1:**

"Raven!"

"Fuck!" Raven yelled, having banged her head—hard—against the book shelf she was crouched uncomfortably under. "What is it?" she yelled toward the front of the bookstore, rubbing at her aching skull.

"I told you to stop wasting money on these toys! You're not a child anymore, and we have to watch our savings now that your mother's gone!" her grandmother scolded.

Raven rolled her eyes and dropped the screwdriver in her hand, abandoning her unfinished invention to retrieve the latest part she'd ordered. "Thanks, Gram," she muttered, grabbing the brown parcel and making an abrupt U-turn.

She plopped down onto the floor next to her work station, careful to avoid the offending shelf, and ripped open the package.

"Ooh," she murmured, pausing in her unwrapping to play around with the bubble wrap she'd uncovered— _pop! pop! pop!_ She grinned down at the plastic, setting it aside for fun later and forging onward. There sure was a lot of wrapping for a hunk of steel, she thought, struggling to peel off a piece of tape hindering her quest. When she'd finally gotten all the damn wrapping off, she stared down at the golden key in her hand. "What the…"

eBay was the _worst_ , she thought, feeling sorely disappointed—she'd needed that part for her new invention!—when, suddenly, the key began _glowing_ in her hand, causing her to drop it as though burned by the light.

But lying on the dingy, blue carpet, the key looked like any ordinary key, and she scoffed internally at herself—she was really starting to lose it. She picked it up again, turning it over between her fingers. Yep, just a nondescript house key. She closed her fist around it and moved to clear up the mess of packaging she'd now have to redo and ship back.

Light, however, began shining through the cracks between her fingers, and, upon opening her palm hesitantly, she saw that the key really was glowing. But now that she looked closer, she could see that the light spelled something out: Veronica Reyes. Her mother.

Well, shit!


	2. Chapter 2

Raven squeezed her eyes shut and listened intently to the sudden roar of blood rushing through her. Her relationship with her mother had never been an easy one. Veronica Reyes had been a woman of extremes—moderation was not a word in her vocabulary.

Raven had grown up with a mom who'd doted on her, one who'd tucked her into bed and told her stories of time travel and adventure until she fell asleep, one who'd packed her lunches with little heart-shaped, crust-less sandwiches and notes that read "I love you!"

She had also grown up with a woman who could hardly be called a mother, one who had sold Raven's clothes for a quick buck when she hadn't had enough cash to fuel her alcoholism, one who had often locked herself into the bookstore at night with a bottle of booze, unwilling to leave what she would call the "looooves" of her life—her books.

Raven had heard a lot about love from her mother—everything from a bright and cheerful "You'll find your soul mate someday! Fate will make sure of it!" to a slurred and halting "Romance isssn't real! It only exists in these boooks! Tha'sss where real loooove is!"

And yet, to Raven's knowledge, her mother had never been in a relationship. The nineteen-year-old didn't even know who her father was, or how her mother had met him. To be honest, though, Raven hadn't really missed him in her life. One bipolar parent was enough; she didn't need a deadbeat of a father to screw her life up even more.

Still, as awful as life with her mother had been, Raven was not prepared for the cancer that eventually killed her. Even three sheets to the wind, her mother had still been full of life, all loud slurring and wild, uncoordinated gesticulations. She had been so quiet and still under the too-white, florescent lights in the hospital; Raven had felt like her mother had died long before she actually did—in many ways, Raven believed that she had.

When they had finally buried her and Raven had been forced to move in with Gram, she'd realized how little her mother had possessed. She'd grown accustomed to hiding her things from her mother, lest they be sold for a bottle of cheap liquor. She hadn't realized that her mother had taken to selling her own things.

As she had stuffed her mother's only possessions into a single cardboard box, she had wondered if that was why the bookstore was failing so miserably, if her mother's addiction had been the cause, rather than the competition from the new chain store down the street. But it had been easy enough to dispute that thought. Perhaps the only passion her mother had had that was greater than her passion for alcohol was that for her books. "You can travel through space and time into someone else's life!" she could hear her mother telling her. "And if you don't like a story? Well, you can change it!"—she had also been an aspiring writer, though that had never amounted to much.

Raven opened her eyes, blinking away her tears as she reached frantically for the empty box beside her. It took a minute for the blurriness to clear as she focused on the shipping label. It was indeed addressed to her, but there was no return address. She shook the empty box and rifled through the discarded packaging but came up empty.

Great. So now she had a glowing key with her mother's name on it, no idea of who had sent it or why, and no clue what it opened. Maybe it was time to see just what the hell her mother had still owned by the time she'd died.

 **A/N:** And in the next chapter, Lexa!


	3. Chapter 3

"Gram, I'm going home!" Raven called out, already halfway out the back door when she heard her grandmother's exasperated sigh. She'd have to remember to clean up the mess she'd left before Gram found it.

It was a quick walk to their building. Raven took the stairs two at a time to reach their fourth-floor apartment, fumbled with her keys at the door, slammed it shut with her foot when she finally made it inside, and made a beeline to the room she shared with Gram.

Where had she put that box?

She rifled through the closet, upending the entire thing in the process. Clothes. Shoes. Books. A box full of scrap metal from previous inventions. Scarves. A shoe box full of…packets of ketchup?—was Gram planning for an impending ketchup shortage, or did she believe they could survive on ketchup alone in the event of a nuclear apocalypse?

…Moving on.

Gloves. A collection of baseball caps no one ever wore. Miscellaneous winter wear. More books. A box full of old photographs—Raven shut it quickly after catching a glimpse of her awkward preteen self. A collection of reusable water bottles gathering dust in the corner. A box full of dresses that looked like they belonged in the previous century. Two milk crate-sized boxes' worth of craft supplies—seriously? Raven made a mental note to tell Gram to stop hoarding crap neither of them used, or even knew how to use for that matter. Even more books. A bag full of plastic bags. Raven's own collection of various wires and cables—you never knew when you'd need an 80-foot ethernet cable! An old coffee tin full of coins. And what seemed to be a collection of lonely, unpaired socks.

But none of her mother's things.

She tried under the beds—she found a hoard of combs and hairbrushes under Gram's and her old teddy bear under hers. She stared at the dresser a moment, wondering whether the box could possibly have fit in it. Eh, might as well. Underwear, socks, bras, and a drawer full of yarn—Gram's.

She abandoned the bedroom. She combed through the living room. She searched the kitchen. She even had a brief lapse of faith in the laws of physics and examined the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

Coming up empty-handed, Raven had to give in to the thought that had started niggling at her as her search had lengthened: it must be in the spare room—Lexa's room. Damn. She'd been afraid of that.

Lexa had moved in shortly after Raven had. The bookstore was tanking; the cost of her mother's medical bills and funeral had set them back a lot more than Raven had expected; and Gram kept insisting that Raven get a proper, college education, to which Raven consistently responded, "With what money?" In short, they'd really needed the cash. So Raven had sucked it up and agreed to bunk with Gram, and they'd rented out the extra bedroom.

Lexa hadn't exactly been Raven's first choice, but she had been the most "responsible-looking" candidate, according to Gram. Raven had only rolled her eyes and acquiesced.

Begrudgingly, she admitted—only to herself, of course—that it was true. Lexa had a military-like discipline to her. She was silent, stoic, and scary. And Raven had hardly spoken a word to her in the six months they'd lived together. Though, that was mostly Lexa's fault; she so rarely came out of her room that Raven wasn't sure she really even lived there.

And the occasional glimpses Raven did have of her were awkward and tense, to say the least. Raven had tried making polite conversation with the girl, at first anyway. After receiving only sharp, monosyllabic responses and long, uncomfortable silences in return for her efforts, Raven had stopped trying entirely. Now she just counted herself lucky if Lexa offered a curt nod her way when they ran into each other.

So now she had two options: wait for Lexa to get home and ask her to get her mother's things for her—an awkward and uncomfortable proposition that would probably involve a lot of Lexa staring at her like she was some sort of caged zoo animal—or sneak into Lexa's room now and grab the box before she got home, risking the girl's wrath if she was discovered.

Raven glanced at her phone for the time: 5:04 PM. Lexa got home at 5:15 like clockwork—again with the military-like discipline. But it wouldn't take too long. Plus, it wasn't like she was stealing anything—it was her mother's stuff…technically now her stuff, with her mother gone.

She pushed that thought away, weighed her options for a moment, and then shrugged. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, right? How much worse could Lexa get anyway?

She made her way to the bedroom in question, slid a bobby pin out of her hair, and crouched down to pick at the lock. It was more finicky than she'd hoped for—she hadn't used her lock picking skills in a while—but she got it open quickly enough.

She didn't even have to wish that Lexa's room was more organized than hers and Gram's. When she stepped inside, it looked like no one actually lived there, the room was so bare. The bed was made, all clean, crisp, perfect lines. And the only additions Raven noticed were an alarm clock on the nightstand in 24-hour format—very military—and a laptop on the desk Gram had provided. Damn. Raven had a feeling she'd have to be careful to leave everything exactly as it was when she'd finished.

She knelt down to check under the bed, which was as pristine and empty as she'd expected it to be. That left the closet, which she found to be just as bare as the bedroom. Lexa's clothes only took up a third of it, and there was a single pair of scuffed boots tucked neatly under the clothes. Jesus. Was this girl real?

Raven spotted the box she was looking for easily. It was the only thing up on the shelf, gathering dust in the back corner. Looking around at everything, it was a wonder Lexa hadn't asked them to get rid of it for her.

"All right," Raven muttered to herself, grabbing the box and setting it onto Lexa's desk, careful to avoid accidentally nudging Lexa's laptop. She regarded the cardboard for a long moment, staving off the mix of emotions she felt bubbling up at the thought of her mother.

Get your head in the game, Reyes. She's dead anyway.

She opened the box and was once again surprised at how little was actually left of her mother. There were a couple framed photos of Raven as a child—still caked in dust from the long months her mother had spent in the hospital toward the end. There was an empty flask that Raven was sure had played its part in her mother's death. There was the frayed and well-worn, bright red sweater Gram had claimed to have knitted one Christmas—Raven could see the remnants of the tag Gram had cut off. There was a battered copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a rainbow assortment of post-its sticking out of it. And there was a leather-bound journal with an ornate, golden lock on it—bingo.

Raven stumbled back into Lexa's chair, holding the journal tightly in her hand and pulling the matching key out of her pocket. She stared at the key again, examining it as it began to glow. The inventor part of her said it was just a small LED bulb inside, somehow activated by the heat of her palm. But the crazy, cuckoo, batshit part of her recalled the bedtime stories her mother had told her, the ones that spoke of magic and fairy tales.

God, even from the grave, her mother had the power to drive her nuts.

Her eyes flickered back to the journal; the soft leather was smooth against her skin. What would this thing tell her? She'd never known her mother to keep a journal—what alcoholic drank her sins away and kept a fucking diary while at it? And why the hell did it scare Raven to think about what could be inside? She'd already seen the worst of her mother. What more could there be?

Fuck it. And fuck her. Raven slid the key into the lock—a perfect fit.

Just as she started turning it, a harsh voice startled her out of her seat. "What the hell are you doing?" Lexa stood menacingly in the doorway, hands on her hips, a deep scowl on her face.

Shit.

Raven had just enough time to glance back down at the now open journal before she felt an uncomfortable, almost painful, tugging at her heart.

 **A/N** : Okay, so just a _tiny_ bit of Lexa this chapter. But there's much more of her coming. Next up: time travel and Monty/Jasper.


	4. Chapter 4

As her vision blurred, Raven began to panic.

Oh god. Was this the end? Was she about to die of a fucking heart attack trying to figure out what the hell her mother's final secret was? With goddamned Lexa Woods staring her down? Because that was not the way she wanted to go. She was too young, dammit! She hadn't lived enough—hadn't seen enough of the world or done enough with her life. Hadn't watched a sunrise or had mindless sex with a stranger or seen the Eiffel Tower or dived with sharks or—oh, holy mother of god, she hadn't cleaned up! Shit! She was going to die. She was going to die, and Gram was going to bring her back to life just to chew her ass out for ransacking their apartment!

Wait! Wait.

Was this even what a heart attack felt like? Was it supposed to be easing like that? Did that mean she was closer to being dead? Oh, god.

It seemed like an unbearably long time before everything came back into focus. But when it did, Raven saw that Lexa was still standing in front of her. Good. She wasn't dead—unless this was her own specific version of hell, and she was to be haunted by an angry Lexa Woods for the rest of her days.

Raven mentally slapped herself—stop it, Reyes—and tried to focus on Lexa in front of her. But she quickly noticed something was off.

The background behind Lexa had changed—drastically. In fact, as Raven turned swiftly around, she found that the entire room had changed. Where Lexa's pristine bed had been was a different one, topped with tangled sheets hanging half onto the floor. And there was a lot more clutter in general: books piled onto every flat surface, clothes strewn hastily about the floor, unpaired shoes waiting to be tripped over.

"What the hell did you do?"

Lexa's accusing tone brought Raven's attention whipping back around to her, but Lexa's gaze was on a calendar tacked to the wall behind her, one whose markings signaled that it was April 28, 1942—crap.

"Why would you assume I did something?" Raven stalled, looking down at the journal and suddenly realizing there was nothing but air in her hand. Oh, shit! She rotated frantically, searching for it. Maybe she'd dropped it. Hopefully she'd dropped it. Please, let her have dropped it!

Five 360's later, the book was still nowhere in sight, and Raven was squeezing the key between her thumb and forefinger so tightly it hurt, just trying to make sure it was there.

Multiple scenarios ran through her mind at rapid-fire pace. Maybe she'd hit her head on the shelf harder than she'd thought and was going crazy. Maybe the stress of her mother's death and their subsequent money troubles had finally gotten to her. Maybe this was all just a dream, a strange and disturbing dream. Maybe she really had died and gone to hell. Or—

Raven thought back to the bedtime stories. She could still hear her mother's voice, from many, many years ago, stressing to a sleepy, six-year-old Raven, "These stories I'm telling you, they're important, okay? Every story is important."

Every story is important.

Was it even possible? It couldn't be. Physics, science, rationality. Those were real. Hard, cold, real, and comforting. There was an explanation for why things worked the way they did, and even if there was no explanation, that just meant it hadn't been discovered yet. But this…Time travel was not real. It couldn't be. It was crazy. _She_ was crazy. Shit. Can you know that you're crazy and still be crazy?

"Raven. Raven! Raven!"

If looks could kill, Raven would surely be dead—that is, if she weren't already, and that possibility had yet to be ruled out.

"I— Yes, Lexa?" Raven found herself saying. What a strange feeling: words coming out of her mouth of their own volition.

"I repeat," Lexa practically growled, "What. Did. You. Do?"

"Well, I got this key in the mail. I was supposed to get— But, you know, eBay. So I couldn't finish my invention. And then— It glows. With my mother's name. So then I opened the journal. And now we're here. Like she said. Like in her stories. We're here. In 1942. And it's real. I think. Except, time travel doesn't exist. So it's not real. And— Can something be real and not real?" She hadn't meant to say that—any of that. How was— Why was this rambling spewing forth from her lips?

Lexa just stared at her. Caged zoo animal. Right. "I mean," Raven said, stressing the words—each one felt like it took an enormous amount of energy to form. "I found a key, with my mother's name on it. I went into your room—"

"You mean you broke into my room."

Right. She'd already forgotten about that. Raven filed that away for some later apologizing—groveling, more like. And that was assuming there even was a later. Huh, she mused, feeling unnaturally giddy all of a sudden, maybe hell wasn't all fire and brimstone. From her perspective, it seemed more icy words and braided hair. "I went into your room to get my mother's things," she continued, breathing easier. "And I found a journal. So I opened it. And now we're here, in 1942."

Okay, maybe it wasn't so much caged zoo animal as escaped mental patient. Damn. Don't giggle, Reyes. Lexa will kill you.

"You can't possibly think that we've…what? Time traveled?" Lexa muttered. "That's crazy." You're crazy, were the words Lexa clearly thought but didn't voice.

Raven had already resigned to the ridiculousness of their situation, though. She was probably dead or dying, and she doubted it made a lick of difference what she termed crazy. Though, if she really was crazy and Lexa really was here with her, that made Lexa crazy too.

She had to work to keep the threatening laugh at that thought from escaping her lungs, knowing that Lexa would not appreciate it. So she remained silent—with great effort—while Lexa's panicked gaze jumped around the room, taking in every foreign object in what had formerly been her bedroom.

"Let's say," Lexa started slowly, eying the inventor warily. "Let's say I believe you, which I don't. Why the hell are we in 1942? And how the hell do we get back to 2015?"

"I don't know," Raven admitted. "I don't have the journal anymore. Just the key."

Lexa's eyes widened in alarm, and she reached forward to snatch the key out of Raven's grip, examining it. "It doesn't say anything on it," she muttered, turning it around over and over again.

Raven snatched it back. "What?" She repeated Lexa's movements and then heaved a giant sigh and sat down, cross-legged, her deliriously giddy mood evaporating as sudden exhaustion took over. "Nope," she said, popping the 'p.' "It doesn't anymore."

Lexa sat too, opting instead for the single, wooden chair in the room. She unceremoniously brushed the clothes and books off of it with a couple of muffled thumps onto the stained, carpeted floor, and sat, perfectly straight, on the uncomfortable throne.

They shared a long, commiserating silence before the opening and slamming of a door caught their attention, and voices entered the apartment.

"Monty, you have to go. You'll be safe there! They'll take care of you!" a male voice cried exasperatedly as feet shuffled across the floor and Lexa and Raven stared wide-eyed at each other.

"Don't be stupid, Jasper!" a second voice rejoined. "They're not taking care of us! They're rounding us up! Keeping the Japs locked away like we're threats!"

The footsteps came closer, and suddenly, the bedroom door was opening, and Lexa was pulling a startled Raven into the tiny, cluttered closet.

"That's not true!" Jasper insisted, though Lexa and Raven could both hear the slightest tremor in his voice as they strained to hear. "They'll keep you safe until the war is over!"

"And what about you?" Monty yelled, making Raven jump slightly, though Lexa reached around to try and hold her still. "What was that?" he asked.

They held their breaths while the objects Raven had startled around them stilled and then exhaled in relief when Jasper ignored them.

"What about me?" he sighed. "I'm going. I got drafted. I don't have a choice."

"I could enlist! We could be together!" Monty insisted.

Raven ever so gently reached over to crack the door open a little, wincing at the painful way Lexa's nails dug into her arms and ignoring the hot breath rushing from her flared nostrils onto Raven's face.

"No!" It was Jasper's turn to yell, and now both women could see that the boys were in each other's faces, just an inch or two of air between them. They looked young, Raven's age, probably. "You can't! I won't let you!"

"Let me?" Monty scoffed, coming so close his chest bumped into Jasper's. "Let me?! You're not in charge of me."

"I love you, dammit!" Frustrated tears tracked down Jasper's cheeks, and he turned around, putting some space between them as he wiped them away angrily, staring, unseeing, out the window.

Monty sighed softly, deflating before their eyes. "I love you, too," he murmured, coming to stand beside Jasper so they were both staring out the window. "That's why I can't imagine staying behind while you're out there. I can't— I can't lose you, Jaz"

"And I can't have you out there," Jasper noted tearfully, facing the other man. "They'll put you on the front lines, Monty! What am I supposed to do? I can't do this with you out there!"

"It's not going to be a cakewalk, Jaz," Monty said gently, leaning his head against Jasper's chest. "They're rounding up the Japanese. They're cutting off our bank accounts and locking us up in our own neighborhoods. I don't know what they'll do to me."

"I know," Jasper admitted in a whisper, wrapping his arms around Monty. "But it's better than what could happen out there.

"Jaz—"

"Please," Jasper begged, squeezing Monty tighter against him. "Please just…just do this for me. I can't— I _can't_ , Monty. I can't protect you out there. I can't keep you safe. Please just— please. If you love me, if you really do, go."

"That's not fair," Monty accused gently, shuddering a little in their embrace.

"All's fair in love and war," Jasper joked, managing a somber giggle out of both of them.

"I'll go," Monty relented. "But you had better come back to me, all right?"

"Yeah," Jasper promised, the tension flooding out of his whole body. "Yeah. I will. I promise."

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

Forgive me if any of this is not historically accurate. I'm trying to make it work for the story I want to tell.

According to my little bit of research, Civil Exclusion Order No. 20 was issued on April 24, 1942, so Monty, whom I've made Japanese in this story, has already reported for registration and must now report for removal to a Japanese internment camp on April 29 (that would be tomorrow within the story). Meanwhile, Jasper has been drafted into the war and must report for training. And Lexa and Raven must figure out what the hell is going on.


End file.
